Watched: 02/27/2025
Format: Apple+
Viewing: First
Director: Greg Berlanti
What an odd movie.
This is kind of what has happened with the mid-budget romcom. They wound up on streaming services. I don't know if Apple wanted to be in the Scarlett Johansson business or if they bought the movie. But here it is on Apple+, which I have for MLS soccer purposes and through T-Mobile.
This is a movie about the value of truth, that uses the conspiracy theory of faking the moon landing as it's second-half pivot, and basically only gets the names of the Apollo 11 astronauts right, tossing out the rest of what happened in actuality in order to make a cute story. It's fine, but if you're a NASA nerd like my wife, and by extension and maybe a lesser extent, me, it will make you want to pull your hair out.
Apollo 11, the focal point of the film, may be one of the most well-documented events in human history (that's the one where they walked on the moon the first time, Howard). To make up how mission control works, and who was working there felt... weird. Even odd little details crop up - like, I don't know if I ever heard anyone ever refer to any part of the vehicle as "the ship", but it happens here a couple of times.
Our premise: Scarlett Johansson plays "Kelly", a Madison Avenue master of advertising in... 1968? 69? I'm not exactly sure. She's recruited by a mysterious government spook played by Woody Harrelson to come to NASA and get people interested in space again. This is in the wake of, I guess, Gemini just being a snooze fest? Or Apollo 8?
I always heard people got bored of NASA once we actually had this down and everything was routine, which, friends - hurling into space on a can of rocket fuel is anything but dull. But I'm not sure the journey to land a human on the moon was when people tapped out.
Instead of the Flight Director of Apollo 11 being Gene Kranz, who is very, very famous if you do a basic Google search - it's now Channing Tatum playing "Cole", who is not Gene Kranz. Cole is, of course, a stick in the mud compared to Kelly, but we learn he became that way because he was also the Flight Director on Apollo I, which... I guess this NASA is like five dudes.
Kelly initially just wants to help sell NASA, and so launches partnerships, like Tang, Omega watches, and other connections. She's able to charm and smarm politicians.
Then, Woody Harrelson returns and demands that they set up an "alternative" moon landing on a soundstage, which they'll have ready in case something goes wrong. And, for everyone who hung out with "that guy" at some point, we get a pretty good explanation for why someone would want to fake the moon landing.
Meanwhile, Channing Tatum and ScarJo bicker but kinda seem to fall for each other. Why? Well, they're both very good looking. Because the two seem like ideological opposites, so if either of them were less than a 9, this wasn't happening.
Even more - we're supposed to buy that Tatum's character lacks any professional acumen whatsoever after a career in the Air Force and time at NASA for years as a top administrator. So ScarJo has to step in and smooth things over for him all the time.
Oh, there's Chekov's Black Cat in the first act, which is kind of funny. But I didn't buy that if government spooks were going to stage a moon landing, they'd do it live. That was so weird - and necessary only insofar as it makes the plot happen.
It's... fine. It's an expensive Hallmark movie in its way. It doesn't care how anything really works so it can tell the cute story it wants to tell. The leads are charming. ScarJo looks fantastic in period dress and hair.
It's also weird to throw a movie out there about NASA, which people definitely have opinions about as well as have knowledge - and then to also lean into Madison Avenue-style advertising, which we got a pretty good picture of, in that specific timeframe, from Mad Men.
But. It's also really weird that this movie leans in so hard on themes of truth and lies and what's important and why. And doesn't really care about the truth at all. And *then* kinda helps conspiracy theorists along. And maybe now is not the time for these mixed messages.
This is one of those movies where you squint and see a different movie probably existed at one point that was funnier, and probably less about the romance and more about the well-known conspiracy. But then you get a ScarJo attached, and she doesn't do those movies, really.
I wasn't mad at the movie, exactly. I just kind of inhaled, realized what it was early on, and dealt with it and watched it play out for what it was, wondering all along the way why they made so many choices they did when they absolutely didn't have to.
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